What made Boston bombing suspects tick?

May 3, 2013
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Anzor Tsarnaev, father of the two men suspected in the Boston bombings, speaks with journalists as their mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, looks at him during a news conference in Makhachkala, Russia, on April 25. / Sergei Rasulov, AFP/Getty Images

by Chuck Raasch and Yamiche Alcindor, USA TODAY

by Chuck Raasch and Yamiche Alcindor, USA TODAY

Note: This story is updated from an earlier version to clarify the area of expertise of anthropologist Ana Zentella.

The triggers for Tamerlan Tsarnaev's transformation into a suspected terrorist may never be fully known, but his alleged acts have already scarred American history.

As intelligence and law enforcement officials in several countries contribute to a prosecution of his brother, Dzhokhar, 19, in the Boston Marathon bombings, a more complex and troubling portrait of the two suspected terrorists has emerged that contradict the benign impressions they left on friends and casual acquaintances.

Tamerlan, 26, was killed in a shootout with police on April 19, four days after law enforcement officials say he and his brother set off two bombs that killed three and maimed more than 260, some severely, near the end of the Boston Marathon. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev remains hospitalized from wounds suffered in his attempted getaway, has been charged by federal authorities with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction and could face the death penalty.

Their mother, Zubeidat, told reporters in Russia on Thursday that she will never believe her sons committed the act. She told CNN separately that she believed the bombing was an elaborate hoax.

But Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has told law enforcement officials that the two had acted on their own and that they were motivated by opposition to U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. U.S. officials have said that Tamerlan had frequently visited jihadist websites. Both the CIA and FBI had flagged Tamerlan in 2011 after Russian security officials raised questions about Tamerlan's suspected terrorist ties, and the FBI interviewed him, but no further action was taken.

Leaders at a mosque said that Tamerlan challenged an imam who preached it was OK to celebrate U.S. holidays. Leaders at the mosque, Islamic Society of Boston in Cambridge, Mass., say it preaches a "moderate American-Islamic theology." But past leaders and worshipers there, and at a sister mosque in Boston, the Islamic Society of Boston, have been convicted of terrorist-related acts or suspected of helping to funnel money to Hamas, a designated terrorist group.

In initial questioning by law enforcement officials after his arrest, Dzhokhar made reference to the radial cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was born in the United States and killed by a CIA drone in Yemen in 2011, according to two law enforcement officials who are not authorized to comment publicly. A judge read Dzhokhar his Miranda rights, and he has stopped talking, according to law enforcement officials.

Investigators are looking into whether Tamerlan, who spent six months in Russia's Caucasus region in 2012, was influenced by the religious extremists who have waged an insurgency against Russian security services in the area for years. The brothers have roots in Dagestan and neighboring Chechnya, but neither spent much time in either place before the family moved to the United States a decade ago.

Ruslan Tsarni, the uncle of the two men accused of carrying out the Boston Marathon bombing, told USA TODAY on Thursday the young men may have been influenced toward radical views by their mother and an Armenian he called "Misha." As boys, the brothers acclimated easily to America, grew up in a close family, and had a happy childhood filled with Chechnyan and American traditions, he said.

Tsarni, 42, is the brother of the Tsarnaevs' father and defended his brother as a hard worker who tried to stop his wife from inviting a radical "Misha" into their home.

But long before their faces were shown by the FBI as suspects No. 1 and 2, Tsarni remembers two young boys who came to America, adjusted and became very close.

"Dzhokhar was all ears and he loved french fries," Tsarni, a business consultant, said outside his Montgomery Village, Md., home Thursday afternoon. "He was so skinny. They were nice American kids while I was privy to their family."

He added: "Dzhokhar would literally follow his brother around the house," he said, "They loved each other."

That relationship is also why Tsarni said he now believes Tamerlan was the plot leader and pulled in his younger brother.

Several factors may be at play for the Tsarnaev brothers, including a powerful bond and loyalty, says an expert on bilingual children.

Anthropologist Ana Zentella, a professor emeritus at the University of California-San Diego in Ethnic Studies, says varied groups the world over tend to place elder sons in particularly high regard and esteem.

"Many cultures regard gender and age and status as important regulators of social conduct," Zentella says. "Certainly, it wouldn't be surprising that in a particular culture, the older male would have more status and be looked up to as a role model."

In 2007, Tsarni had a falling out with the Tsarnaev brothers and their mother.

During that time Tsarni said his brother told him an Armenian man named "Misha," began visiting the family's small Cambridge apartment. The man would stay past midnight and talk to the family about Islam. When the Tsarnaev father would object, the wife would brush him off, Tsarni said.

"Misha," described as a man in his 30s, told Tamerlan sports, music and school were unimportant and instead stressed a radical version of Islam, Tsarni said.

"A person came inside their house, and a parent supported it," Tsarni said of the radicalization of his nephews. "My brother would just leave the house and come back 20 hours later. He was a mechanic and worked hard. He loved America."

People in the heavily Armenian community of Watertown, Mass., said they doubted the story.

"For an Armenian to convert to Islam is like finding a unicorn in a field," said Nerses Zurabyan, 32, an information technology director who lives in nearby Cambridge. "It would be such a shock to the Armenian community that everyone would know this person."

Tsarni said he last spoke with Tamerlan in 2009. Gone was the hard partying, outgoing person he once knew. In his place was a completely different young man who dodged questions about whether he was working or in school and instead talked about spirituality.

"He would just say he was on a path to God," Tsarni said of Tamerlan.

The parents moved back to Russia last year, Tsarni said.

In September 2011, Tamerlan's application for U.S. citizenship was denied after a routine background check flagged the FBI interview, while Dzhokhar, who was born in Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet Republic, received his.

The Tsarnaev family included two daughters, Bella, born in 1988, and Ailina, born in 1990. In 2003, the family emigrated to the United States, where they rented an apartment on Norfolk Street in Cambridge. The parents moved back to Russia last year, Tsarni told USA TODAY.

While they lived in Cambridge, their mother set up a spa out of the cramped apartment, according to Boston-born writer and yoga teacher Alyzza Kilzer, who posted on tumblr and salon.com about her experiences with the family. She wrote that he and her mother received facials from Zubeidat for roughly five years, from 2007-2012.

In her spa visits, Kilzer described Dzhokhar as "friendly and easygoing" and that she always felt she was treated kindly by him and his two sisters, one of whom had had a child by an arranged marriage. But Kilzer wrote she found Tamerlan unfriendly. Eventually, Kilzer wrote, she stopped getting facials from Zubeidat after the mother started quoting conspiracy theories that the U.S. government "purposefully created" the 9/11 terrorist attacks, "to make Americans hate Muslims.

"'It's real,'" Kilzer quoted the mother as saying and, referring to Tamerlan, added: "'My son knows all about it. You can read on the Internet.'"

Outwardly to others, the Tsarnaev brothers were seen as modest and athletic.

Tamerlan was a champion Golden Gloves boxer, in 2010 receiving the prestigious Rocky Marciano Trophy given to the New England heavyweight champion. Dzhokhar was a wrestler at the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School in Cambridge. He was named a Greater Boston League Winter All-Star in 2011, the year he graduated.

Both pursued higher education, Tamerlan as a student for three semesters at Bunker Hill Community College from 2006-2008. Dzhokhar was studying at the University of Massachusetts campus in Dartmouth; his father told the Associated Press that Dzhokhar was in pre-med.

Larry Aaronson, a retired history teacher at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, was the brothers' neighbor and got to know Dzhokhar while taking photos of the high school wrestling team and other school activities.

"It's completely out of his character," Aaronson said of Dzhokhar's alleged role in the bombings. "Everything about him was wonderful. He was completely outgoing, very engaged, he loved the school. He was grateful not to be in Chechnya."

Dzhokhar was not overtly political or religious, Aaronson says. "He spoke and acted like any other high school kid."

And perhaps like many college kids. Dzhokhar's dorm mates at the UMass campus described him as a pot-smoking, joking, partier, someone they would never have suspected of being capable of setting off a bomb.

"It's like finding out your best friend is a serial killer," said Jennifer Mendez, who met Tsarnaev last year in their freshmen dorm and partied regularly with him. "He was really social and hilarious. He was one of those people who would crack one joke and make your night."

Tamerlan's life was less carefree.

In 2009, he was arrested for domestic violence against a girlfriend at the time, but the charges were dismissed before a scheduled jury trial in February 2010, according to Stephanie Chelf Guyotte, director of communications for the Middlesex District Attorney in Woburn, Mass. She would not name the alleged victim.

Tamerlan married Katherine Russell, 24, who had converted to Islam, in 2009 or 2010. They had a daughter, who is now 3. Russell worked long hours as a home health care aide, said her lawyer, Amato DeLuca, who told the Associated Press that the widow knew nothing of the terrorist attack.

Tamerlan and his family received unspecified welfare benefits from the Massachusetts Department of Health and Human Services until 2012, when they became ineligible based on income, according to Alec Loftus, communications director of the agency.

While preparing for a Golden Gloves boxing competition in Salt Lake City in 2009, Tamerlan told an interviewer: "I don't have a single American friend. I don't understand them." He lamented the breakdown of "values," and worried that "people can't control themselves."

But his father, Anzor, told reporters before leaving for the United States - to bury his son, he said - on Thursday, that "he had lots of friends, I know these friends." And the uncle, Tsarni, said Thursday he recalled walking down Massachusetts Avenue in Boston with Tamerlan in about 2006 and being greeted by many people he knew.

In that interview before the boxing competition, published in 2010 in The Comment, a Boston University College of Communication magazine, Tamerlan Tsarnaev also expressed a dream of boxing for the U.S. Olympic team.

He described himself as a devout Muslim who also liked the raunchy spoof film Borat, in which actor Sasha Baron Cohen plays a sex-obsessed TV reporter from Kazakhstan on a mission to try to understand American culture.

On Thursday, Zubeidat told reporters in Dagestan that she regretted moving the family to the United States. ""Why did I even go there? Why? I thought America is going to, like, protect us, our kids, it's going to be safe."